Washington [214]
Although Germantown ended in defeat, Washington had shown extraordinary audacity. With grudging admiration, Howe conceded that he didn’t think “the enemy would have dared to approach after so recent a defeat as that at Brandywine.”51 The French foreign minister, the Count de Vergennes, who was pondering an alliance with America, claimed that “nothing struck him so much” as the Battle of Germantown. 52 He was impressed that Washington, stuck with raw recruits, had fought two consecutive battles against highly seasoned troops. In writing about the battle, Washington stressed how bravely his men had fought and how narrowly victory had eluded them. “Unfortunately, the day was overcast by a dark and heavy fog,” he told one correspondent, “which prevented our columns from discovering each other’s movement . . . Had it not been for this circumstance, I am fully persuaded the enemy would have sustained a total defeat.”53 In narrating events to Hancock, he disguised the fact that twice as many Americans as British had been killed. “Upon the whole,” he wrote, “it may be said the day was rather unfortunate than injurious. We sustained no material loss of men . . . and our troops, who are not in the least dispirited by it, have gained what all young troops gain by being in actions.”54 Of these assertions, the last came closest to the mark: the battle was the sort of defeat that supplies a fillip to the confidence of the losing side. Now, Washington averred, his men knew they could “confuse and rout even the flower of the British army with the greatest ease.”55 Congress seemed to agree with this generous assessment and not only commended Washington for bravery but forged a medal in his honor. After the humiliating flight of Congress from Philadelphia, the Battle of Germantown had proved that the patriotic cause, if ailing, was far from moribund.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Rapping a Demigod over the Knuckles
TWO WEEKS AFTER the Battle of Germantown, George Washington digested the bittersweet news that General Horatio Gates had trounced General John Burgoyne at Saratoga, capturing his army of five thousand men. Just when Washington ached for a victory, his rival achieved a stunning conquest. A victory so incontestable made Gates the natural darling of Washington’s critics. Washington knew that appearances would count heavily against him and that in the afterglow of Saratoga Gates’s reputation would be gilded and his own recent defeats darkened. An anonymous pamphlet called The Thoughts of a Freeman made the rounds of Congress, indicting Washington’s leadership with the damning remark that “the people of America have been guilty of idolatry in making a man their God.”1
For all the adulation of Washington, a vocal, persistent minority of naysayers took issue with his leadership. As assorted voices of discontent echoed in Congress, these discussions were cloaked in secrecy. Writing to John Adams, Dr. Benjamin Rush voiced what others privately thought. Gates, he said, had planned his campaign with “wisdom and executed [it] with vigor and bravery,” making a telling contrast with the hapless Washington, who had been “outgeneralled and twice beaten.”2 He extolled Gates’s army as “a well-regulated family” while deriding Washington’s as “an unformed mob.”3 The disgruntled Adams was relieved to see Gates victorious. “If it had been [Washington],” he said, “idolatry and adulation would have been unbounded, so excessive as to endanger our liberties.”4
With excellent antennae for rivals, Washington knew that Gates represented a competitive threat to his leadership. In August Congress had arbitrated a feud between Philip Schuyler and Gates for control of the army’s northern department.
Washington always felt warm friendship toward Schuyler, the undisputed favorite of the New Yorkers. But the bearish Gates, who often dispensed with etiquette,